Broad Expansion Program Listed for Hebrew University by Schocken

November 21, 1939

JERUSALEM (Nov. 20)

A broad war-time expansion program for the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, including erection of new buildings, has been outlined in a broadcast by Salmon Schocken, honorary treasurer and chairman of the University’s executive council.

A feature of the program is the early erection of a building to house part of the faculty of humanities, especially the Institute of Jewish Studies, to be followed by an archaeological museum nearly as large as the medical school atop Mt. Scopus.

Competition for designs for the humanities building, which will carry the name of Sol Rosenbloom, late Pittsburgh philanthropist, will close at the end of this month. Erection of the building, at an estimated cost of Â£10,000, will begin immediately thereafter.

Mr. Schocken revealed that the university had expected 1,100 students for the new term, but the outbreak of war prevented Poles from leaving their country and also held up Germans, Austrians and Czechs for the time being.

On the other hand, he pointed out, a number of Italians have arrived and the number of Palestinian students is also increasing. He announced that among 130 members of the research and teaching staff were 50 refugees, including Italians.

Mr. Schocken reported that the foundations have been laid for medical and agricultural faculties, while the faculties of science and the humanities were considering expansion. Referring to the medical center, Mr. Schocken expressed the hope that the future would see increased cooperation with two of the founding groups, the Hadassah and the American Jewish Physicians’ Committee.

In view of the destruction of European Jewry, the speaker said, the university was intensifying its efforts to draw a larger number of students from the west, especially the United States. Stressing the university’s duty to rescue the scattered and endangered spiritual treasures of eastern and central Europe, Mr. Schocken declared that erection of a museum of Jewish antiquities would be “symbolic at this hour.”

The institution’s annual budget, Mr. Schocken revealed, was now $500,000. He said that more than $5,000,000 spent by the university during the past 14 years had found its way into the economic life of the country.